Gmail Offline: Sync & storage

Gmail Offline is a Google Chrome app that lets you read and manage messages when you don’t have an Internet connection. Any changes you make in Gmail Offline are automatically updated or synced when you’re back online.

Tip: Use Gmail Offline when your connection is unreliable

If you’re in an area with an unreliable or slow Internet connection, using the Gmail Offline app can help keep Gmail responsive while your changes are synced in the background.

Sync between online and offline

While you’re offline, you can archive, label, delete, compose, and more. Once you’re back online, all your pending actions will happen automatically in your Gmail.

Change which messages are synced

By default Gmail Offline syncs all messages in Starred and Drafts and the last seven days of mail. Gmail Offline never syncs messages in Trash or Spam. You can change the amount of mail that’s synced:

Open the Gmail Offline app.

Click the gear icon in the upper right corner.

In the Download mail from past drop-down menu, select either week, 2 weeks, or month.

Click Apply.

Note

If you close Google Chrome while you're online, sync will stop, so make sure you keep Chrome open if you want your changes to sync between online and offline.

If you’re working offline in Chrome and then you later access Gmail from a different browser or device, you won’t see the changes you made offline until Gmail Offline syncs.

Message storage

Security

Your mail syncs to your Google Chrome browser’s storage on the computer on which you installed the app. This means that it could potentially be accessible to anyone with access to your browser. For your protection, make sure not to install Gmail Offline for Chrome on a public or shared computer.

Turn on offline mail storage

If you don’t have offline mail storage enabled, you’ll be asked whether to allow offline mail storage each time you open the app. If you choose not to allow offline mail storage, you can continue to use Gmail Offline while online, but no mail will be stored on your browser and therefore no mail will be available offline.

Remove offline data

You can remove offline data from your browser's storage when you don’t need it anymore: